Monday, May 02, 2005

Precalculus Success

Sometimes I love when at the last minute I get this "light bulb idea" about how to teach a particular topic. That happened today with my precalculus class's first exposure to a derivative. We've been working on limits and left and right limits and then moved on to the calculating of the slope of the tangent line to a curve, and today, Aha. Instead of just telling them the standard "shortcut" form of derivative for f(x) = ax^n ...... I had each group use the formal definition of derivative to calculate it for f(x) = ax^2 + b for various a's and b's, then as a class we looked at all the derivatives, and they saw the pattern. Yea. Tomorrow we'll do 3rd power and also maybe one ax^2 + bx + c one and we'll be off.

1 comment:

According to recent research by Ofcom, 37% of adults and 60% of teens admit to being ‘highly addicted’ to their smartphones, with users checking their smartphones on average, 34 times a day. Additionally, 51% of adults and 65% of teens use their smartphones while socializing with others, and 22% and 47% respectively, confess to answering their smartphones even while on the toilet.

‘Moodoff Day’ on February 26th asks smartphone and mobile device addicts (and those that don’t yet consider themselves such) to spend a morning without their beloved devices.

If you feel you could benefit from a morning without smartphones and mobile devices and want to encourage others to follow suit, go to www.MoodOffDay.org and pledge your support. You can even post your personal experiences of smartphone addiction or upload funny images showing smartphone addicts in action at www.facebook.com/MoodOffDay